“Knowing when you’re going to die. How cool is that?” Not from The Immortalists (haven’t cracked it; the bigger the hype, the longer I wait to read). No, that line is from someone best described as existing on the periphery of my life. But I spent a good part of the day thinking about it.

I got a Nor’easter for my birthday. Which means spending it alone with my two rabbits. And my books and my writing. Not something I mind, really, it’s just different than the plan—tonight was to be my novel’s launch party, so I was geared up to socialize, but the weather had other plans.

I did get roses, too, beautiful roses, red ones, and if this were a post about bad, bad love, or good-bad love, I’d talk about them, but they would take us off topic, so I will post a pic on Instagram. You can go look at them if you like.

I’d rather talk about that line—“knowing when you’re going to die, how cool is that?” The person who spoke it drives a taxi. I started using the taxi service around here because:

1. A) I wanted my second husband to go away so badly I let him take the car, even though it was almost paid off and I’d paid half of it; and
2. B) I am a terrible driver and worse in snow.

I’ve been a steady customer for twelve years now.

I’m going to call the person who spoke that line Alistair; his name does have a similarly antiquated, genteel ring. Alistair, a handsome man in a genteel, unassuming way, a pleasant person to look upon, was one of the first drivers I met, and we immediately discovered common ground. We are both from the south, transplanted to the northern tundra. We both love to read. The classical radio station is our default. We both love to garden. I’d see Alistair once every month or two, and we’d catch up. He’s been very encouraging about my writing.

He first spoke the line—“Knowing when you’re going to die…”—last summer, when he told me, in an almost offhand manner, that he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. Which was weird, because he hadn’t smoked for nearly twenty years. I’d smoked too, though not as much as Alistair, and I’d quit about the same amount of time ago. He didn’t seem too bothered by the cancer, he was in great health, he ate organic, and he exercised. And meditated. They’d caught it early, they were giving him a good prognosis. He spoke the line as a joke—they hadn’t told him when he was going to die. They were going to make him better.

But the cancer came back, as it does. Almost always. Starting in the fall, when I’d ask Alistair how the treatments were going, they were always trying something new, but they were always encouraged.

Until Tuesday. This Tuesday.

Tuesdays are grocery days for me, and Alistair picked me up. He didn’t make the “how cool is that?” joke. Instead, he told me they’d taken him off chemo, weren’t going to operate again. They’d put him on an immunotherapy drug, one I’ve seen advertised on television (only in a country without a national healthcare system…). It shares its first syllable with words like opportunity, optimistic. Option. The commercials show attractive couples in late middle age (who definitely do not have cancer, they look too good), deliriously enjoying vacations in Europe. Or climbing mountains and fishing (the couples don’t have cancer, but they do have enough money to stop doing whatever they do to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on, long enough to go enjoy what’s left of time to one of them). The drug is meant to lengthen life, to make it better. The side effects are lethal, and there’s a whole raft of them.

Alistair did make a deadpan joke about the side-effects—lethal, sure, but then what isn’t, if you give it long enough? His nice eyes, behind their little round glasses, twinkled at me in the rear view mirror. He was giving me permission to laugh.

He told me his daughter had been to see him last weekend. “She’s in healthcare.” His eyes, in the mirror. Translation: She knows. Then he cracked a joke about his son, paid by his ex-wife to stay away from him. “He spends a lot of time in prison. So she can keep right on paying.” A chuckle, that he had to turn into a cough.

And then we were at the supermarket. Our usual “Good to see you” stuck in my throat. He tossed his side of it off with aplomb, the problem was me. I was wondering if I’d see Alistair again.

When the white cab pulled up to drive me and my purchases home, I opened the door and saw it was Alistair behind the wheel. Twice in one day, I felt like I’d been given an early birthday present. I felt joy.

During the drive, Alistair volunteered that he and his wife read aloud to one another, lying side by side in bed, every night. They’ve done so for twenty-two years. We talked about Louise Erdrich, we both love the way she so matter-of-factly weaves in the supernatural. We agreed: avoiding the newest one, the dystopian one, because we love Erdrich too much not to love what she writes, and we’re both afraid we might not love that. Alistair and his wife haven’t read LaRose yet, and I said they really, really should. And then I wanted to take that back, but I couldn’t.

He said maybe they would have time, and I had to choke back tears. His eyes in the mirror again. “It’s me who reads, you know. She loses her place.”

When I was in my twenties, and even my thirties, I threw wild birthday parties, in Spain or in the East Village, or wherever I happened to be. My living room cleared out for an enormous dinner table, specially rolled joints beside each plate. Or the tequila party, for my twenty-somethingth, maybe twenty-six, in west Philly. ONLY tequila was served. People puked in the tub and made out in the kitchen. I fell down the steep stairs while running to open the door, twice. The only thing that kept my neck from breaking was all the tequila I had in me—it made me limber. I rolled with the fall instead of resisting. The second time, I passed out. My friends laid me out on my bed in my room and staged a wake. They took pictures. Which got around.

Birthdays are more contemplative affairs for me now, even if I have a party planned.

And they are a privilege. My birthday wish for this year: that Alistair and his wife be granted the time to read LaRose, from beginning to end. And then again, from start to finish, and then all over again.

LaRose is a very long book.